OFFICER’S OATH: My Vow to Defend the Constitution ~ i · 2012. 7. 2. · ii ~ OFFICER’S OATH:...

OFFICER’S OATH: My Vow to Defend the Constitution ~ i

OFFICER’S OATH Why my vow to defend the Constitution demanded that I sacrifice my career

By

Terry Lakin with Jack Cashill

and David Mercaldo

ii ~ OFFICER’S OATH: My Vow to Defend the Constitution

Officer’s Oath

Published by: Paperclip Press. 1603 Belvue Drive Forest Hill, MD 21050 paperclippress.com

ISBN 978-0-578-08664-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2012939370

Copyright ©2012 by Terry Lakin and the Terry Lakin Action Fund

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital photocopy, recording, or any other without the prior permission of the author.

All rights reserved solely by the author. The author guarantees all contents are original and do not infringe upon the legal rights of any other person or work. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the permission of the author.

By Terry Lakin with Jack Cashill and David Mercaldo Marco Ciavolino, Managing Editor Current News Photography by Marco Ciavolino Copyedited by Rita Samols Draft composition and production by Enktesis, LLC / enktesis.com

Related Sites: TerryLakinActionFund.com SafeguardOurConstitution.org OfficersOath.com 1. Constitutional Law, 2. Presidential Eligibility, 3. Voting

OFFICER’S OATH: My Vow to Defend the Constitution ~ iii

About the Contributors Terry Lakin

Lieutenant Colonel Lakin received military orders in late February 2011 for deployment to Afghani-stan, including a requirement that he provide “copies of his birth certificate.” Lt. Col. Lakin is pre-pared to provide a certified copy of his certification of vital record that lists his birth hospital, physi-

cian’s name and other key information. He has provided this document for many other required processes, such as his commissioning into the military as an officer, his security clearance and his

marriage license. He is not only the highest-ranking active-duty officer to go public over this contro-versy, he is also the first active-duty officer to do so. Terry was court-martialed for his pursuit of con-

firmation of Barack Obama’s eligibility to act as commander of our armed services.

Jack Cashill Within the last decade Jack has written six books of non-fiction: First Strike, Ron Brown’s Body, Hoodwinked, Sucker Punch, What’s the Matter with California, and Deconstructing Obama. Three of his books have cracked Amazon’s top ten list. Jack has produced a score of documentaries for regional PBS and national cable channels, including the Emmy Award–winning The Royal Years. Jack has a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue University, has taught media and literature at

Purdue and at Kansas City area universities, and served as a Fulbright professor in France.

David Mercaldo David Mercaldo, who holds a PhD in childhood neurological behavior, is a prolific writer on such

topics as education, politics, finance and drama, and travels nationwide as a motivational speaker to schools, colleges, civic organizations and business groups. This educator, playwright and author has

given us such acclaimed works as Ferry (as in Staten Island), Seamstress, and now a children’s book, Little Boy Boo (the adventures of a Yorkshire terrier who thought he was a boy).

Marco Ciavolino Marco Ciavolino, who holds a ThM, was engaged by the original law firm to provide technology support for the court-martial. He has continued to support Terry’s case by overseeing the websites, communications, and the book. He has been working in general marketing-communications since

1984 and has provided a wide range of services to his clients including design, project management, application development, technology research, event management, logistics, web development, photog-raphy, radio and video (live and recorded), and campaign management for Republican candidates.

OFFICER’S OATH: My Vow to Defend the Constitution ~ v

Dedication Dedication

No story of hardship can be told without thanking the people who have stayed true to the storyteller throughout his ordeal.

Thank You, Jesus, for coming into my heart when asked, for forgiving all sins, past, present and future. Thank you for providing a goal for me to reach in my life and supporting me through my wrong turns, setbacks and hard-ships. Thank You too for letting me enjoy the fruits of honest hard work, letting me be part of a happy family, and giving me the ability to help and assist others in need as I try to follow in Your footsteps.

Thank you, my wonderful wife, Pilaiporn, for enduring your own hardships yet willingly sharing my burdens and accepting my shortcomings. You have enabled us to emerge through this ordeal stronger and closer, and now all the richer with Jesus as the third person in our covenant.

Thank you to my mother, father, brothers, family and friends. All of you have had a part in influencing my life for the better. I truly have been blessed to have such loving and dedicated parents, such loyal brothers, and such close friends. You have helped to form my belief system and have shared in the successes and joys of my life as well as its hardships.

Like Christianity, the family reveals its truest value only when a member is confronted with adversity. All too many people have no positive family ties and refuse to seek evidence of the Creator. My prayers go out to those people. I pray that they may find their way to the Lord, that they may become the anchor for a morally grounded family or group of friends of their own, and that they in turn find their way to help their neighborhoods, churches and communities. It is through such voluntary associations that our country be-came great. Our Founders knew their value, and it is up to us to prevent their erosion.

What is the purpose of this book? I have hoped to tell my story, share my opinions, describe my journey to Christ, and relate my continuing education

vi ~ OFFICER’S OATH: My Vow to Defend the Constitution

in our country’s history and in its wonderful Christian Founders. My greatest hope is that some who read this story will ask for Jesus Christ to be their Sav-ior. I hope others will read, learn and truly make efforts to restore our country to the values embodied in our Constitution: freedom, self-reliance, strong families, churches and communities, and empowered states with limited fed-eral government.

I am certain that I and the many people involved in this book will be attacked by those who wish to deny that our Constitution and country are in peril. Although I am not optimistic, I hope these critics will honestly and reflective-ly address the simplest of questions: Why has the question of constitutional eligibility persisted? Why has the truth not been accessible? Why has our na-tion become a nation where many in our government appear to be above the law? Transparency and truth are the solutions to the divisive issues that plague this country.

There are so many people who have helped support and protect me, and I wish I could name you all. But for present purposes, Jack Cashill, thank you for your assistance with this book and your mentorship in life views. Marco Ciavolino, thanks for your outstanding technical assistance, your friendship, and your guidance in so many areas. And thanks to all the other Christians and Constitutional Patriots who have believed in me throughout.

The truth matters. The Constitution matters.

Peace in His Name,

Terry

OFFICER’S OATH: My Vow to Defend the Constitution ~ vii

OFFICER’S OATH Why my vow to defend the Constitution demanded that I sacrifice my career

Table of Contents About the Contributors ............................................................................................................ iii Dedication .................................................................................................................................. v Prologue..................................................................................................................................... 1 1. 27 April 2011 ........................................................................................................................ 5 2. Are You Still Free? ............................................................................................................... 11 3. Never Give Up .................................................................................................................... 17 4. You Knew My Path ............................................................................................................. 25 5. Something to Hide .............................................................................................................. 37 6. Of Paramount Importance .................................................................................................. 44 7. Grounding in Good Sense ................................................................................................... 50 8. Take Some Responsibility .................................................................................................... 60 9. The Constitution Matters .................................................................................................... 65 10. The Truth Matters............................................................................................................. 77 11. Doing What Is Right ......................................................................................................... 84 12. Stay Strong ........................................................................................................................ 91 13. Crossing the Line ............................................................................................................... 98 14. Duty, Honor, Country .................................................................................................... 105 15. I Know Why You Are Here ............................................................................................. 112 16. Never Wanted to Be Famous ........................................................................................... 117 17. A Moral and Religious People ......................................................................................... 127 18. Love Mercy and Walk Humbly ....................................................................................... 133 19. Epilogue: Walking Righteous .......................................................................................... 139 Essays by Key Participants in Terry’s Action .......................................................................... 147

Joseph Farah: The War on Citizenship ................................................................................................ 147 Miki Booth: From Near Dream to New Job: Moving Communities to Action ................................... 157 Cmdr. Charles Kerchner (Ret): An Officer’s Oath Does Not Expire or Retire .................................... 167 Dean Haskins: The Presidential Circus ................................................................................................ 179 James Bridge: An Oath Is Before God.................................................................................................. 187

Vignettes of Key Participants in Terry’s Cause ...................................................................... 195 A Note about Sheriff Joe Arpaio .......................................................................................................... 195 Michael New: An American Soldier Who Refused to Be a Mercenary ................................................. 195 David Mercaldo, PhD: Voices Crying in the Wilderness ..................................................................... 197 Walter Francis Fitzpatrick III: A Republic... do or die!......................................................................... 199 Daria Novak: Are we on the road to political China? ........................................................................... 203 Ed Noonan: Terrorists got more constitutional protection than Terry did. ......................................... 204 Sarah Redd: I started out as a Democrat. ............................................................................................. 205 Rock Peters: You can’t run a country on personality. ........................................................................... 205 Patra Minocha: Political activism is not some sort of competitive sport. .............................................. 206 Theresa Cao: Sometimes truth shouts from the mountaintops!............................................................ 208 Gordon Smith: Terry is the best-kept secret in America. ...................................................................... 209 Rudy Davis: I see the world through the grid of my faith..................................................................... 211 Brent Morehouse: Americans have been asleep. ................................................................................... 211 David Moxley: The least I can do is let Terry tell his story. .................................................................. 213 Linda M.: I’m aghast at the ambivalence of the American people. ....................................................... 214 The Reverend David Manning: Everybody in Congress knows this man is a fraud!............................. 216

viii ~ OFFICER’S OATH: My Vow to Defend the Constitution

Jerome R. Corsi, PhD: Can our military raise a legal question? ........................................................... 218 Catherine “Kate” Vandemoer, PhD: God had a great deal to do with the Constitution. ..................... 220 Greg Lakin, DO, JD: I believe what my brother did was an act of patriotism! .................................... 222 Lt. Col. Robert A. Perrich: Terry is in a war, and I’m fighting alongside him!..................................... 224 Margaret “Ducky” Hemenway: This issue is one of paramount national importance. ......................... 225 Joseph Farah: We’re in trouble in America! We’re losing our respect for the rule of law. ..................... 227 Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely: I don’t think justice for Terry will come to pass. ............................................ 229 Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney: I’m proud of Terry! He did what he felt he had to do. ......................... 231 Cmdr. Charles Kerchner (Ret): I’ve got deep roots in this country and I’m not leaving! ..................... 232 Capt. Pamela Barnett (Ret): Our freedoms are at stake at this point. .................................................. 235 Jim and Peggy DeJarnatt: We need to get the message out! ................................................................. 237 Orly Taitz, Esq.: “I believe [Obama] is the most dangerous thing one can imagine.” .......................... 239 Miki Booth: He’s shredding the Constitution. .................................................................................... 242 Sharon Rondeau: We need to restore the rule of law. .......................................................................... 244 Peter Boyles: We still have no answers. The questions are still enormous! ........................................... 246 Maj. Stefan F. Cook: I Made the Decision. ......................................................................................... 249

The Art of Terry’s Case .......................................................................................................... 253 The Chain of Command Bulletin Board ............................................................................................. 255 Michigan Trucks ................................................................................................................................. 256 The Emperor Has No Clothes ............................................................................................................ 257 The Freedom Club .............................................................................................................................. 258 Timeline to Lawsuits ........................................................................................................................... 259 Eligibility Checklist ............................................................................................................................. 259 Medical Application ............................................................................................................................ 260 Eligibility for Dummies ....................................................................................................................... 261

The Websites of Terry’s Case and Life ................................................................................... 263 Safeguard Our Constitution ................................................................................................................ 263 TerryLakinActionFund.com................................................................................................................ 264 OfficersOath.com ................................................................................................................................ 265 AmericasWebRadio.com ..................................................................................................................... 266

Key Eligibility Resources ........................................................................................................ 267 General Timeline of Terry’s Case ........................................................................................... 270

OFFICER’S OATH: My Vow to Defend the Constitution ~ 1

Prologue In July of 2010 a friend called and asked me if I wanted to take on an inter-esting project, one that would challenge the office of the President of the United States.

Who, I asked, was going to head up this project? He briefly explained the facts of Lt. Col. Terry Lakin’s case and his decision to disobey a direct order, to force a court-martial. The plan was that the court-martial would allow for a modicum of discovery and investigation that might bring some resolution to the already growing concerns about Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibil-ity to be president.

So, after a few phone calls with Paul Jensen and Margaret “Ducky” Hemenway, we began the project. First we built the Safeguard Our Constitu-tion website. This would form the foundation for Terry’s communications. A few days later I traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet Terry, Paul, and Ducky for the first time at a private club in downtown Washington.

After a few introductions and light rehearsals, we taped Terry’s first state-ment. Originally, we had intended to produce something very edgy, with shifts and cuts. But once I met Terry and heard him speak the script that we had worked on, it was very clear that we needed to just let him speak directly to the camera. In that first video, Terry stated clearly what he was about to do. Within weeks the video had been viewed by upwards of 300,000 people on YouTube.

Over the next few months the case grew in complexity and frustration. It was clear, early on, that the military courts were simply not going to allow for any discovery. The twists and turns of that experience are the core of the story, so we’ll leave it to Terry to fill in those details.

A few weeks before the court-martial and highly probable conviction, Terry and his brother approached me and asked me to serve as the administrative trustee for a family trust that would raise money for Terry’s family. It would

2 ~ OFFICER’S OATH: My Vow to Defend the Constitution

also fund the communication of Terry’s message and help protect him from further actions and perhaps another court-martial.

Why another court-martial? Even though Terry was stripped of his income, benefits, pension, and authority, he was still under the Uniform Code of Mil-itary Justice (UCMJ) until discharged. This meant he had to continue under his oath as an officer. An aggressive or ideological JAG could interpret any activity on Terry’s part as ‘conduct unbecoming an officer’ and possibly send him back to jail.

Starting the trust was like starting any other business. We had to open a post office box and set up bookkeeping, bank accounts, and more. We needed a logo, a website, an e-mail address, and social media pages. Shortly after we began the Terry Lakin Action Fund, Terry was convicted and sent to prison.

During the five and a half months Terry was in prison, and subsequently, we received a steady stream of encouraging e-mails and letters. Yes, we had some hate mail and some very abusive phone calls also, but they were few and far between. And yes, Terry, his life, the websites, his mailings, and just about everything else about him (and me a bit as well) have been dissected and dis-membered by a couple of the active ‘Obot’ sites. ‘Obots’ are devotees who are fixated on Obama without regard to Obama’s behavior in the birth certificate area and other areas.

The two websites, two Facebook sites, Twitter site, YouTube account, and various support sites have logged more than a million visitors. The two Face-book sites have more than 3,000 friends between them. Terry has received thousands of e-mail messages. They almost all say the same thing: Thank you for standing up for our Constitution when no one else can or will.

After the release of the purported long-form birth certificate on April 27, 2011, contributions dropped dramatically. The trust then had to drop back to maintaining only basic communications and supporting the Lakins as funds allowed.

This book fell within the scope of my responsibilities. It was my desire that it tell Terry’s story well. However, the story is much bigger than Terry’s person-al experiences, and the country needs to know the principles behind Terry’s decision and the broad range and scope of his influence.

To that end we invited several of those who have continued the work to con-tribute essays covering various related topics. You will find their insights in the second section of the book.


We then engaged an author to interview key people who contributed to Ter-ry’s case intellectually or emotionally. You’ll find their stories in the third sec-tion of the book.

The Constitution was not created by accident. It was not a frivolous effort. Some seem to think a bunch of guys were sitting around a pub one night and said, “Hey, let’s start a country.” The founding of our country was anything but that.

Our Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and other founding documents came out of thousands of years of struggle, death and dialogue, debate and discussion, bravery and boldness. They were the most precise expression of a form of government that finally abandoned the con-cept of a sovereign monarchy in favor of government by the people, for the people.

The basis of this form of government is the value of the individual endowed with unalienable rights (rights that cannot be revoked under any circum-stances). It is on this basis that we formed representative government (not a democracy). We elect individuals to manage our affairs locally, statewide, and nationally, assuming they will manage according to constitutional law, which enabled them to be elected in the first place.

Any elected official or appointee who flagrantly refuses to comply with the Constitution by commission or omission must be called to account.

That is all Terry asked for: simple compliance with the Constitution. As of the date of this prologue neither Obama, nor his staff, nor any of the sitting members of Congress have been willing to do what Terry did.

The Constitution is demanding. It demands that we learn it and protect it.

And what is the reader to take from this work?

First, hopefully, a deepened appreciation for a man who took seri-ously his oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, an extraordinary document that came out of millennia of physical and intellectual struggles.

Second, an awareness of the effect that one man or woman can have when they stand up for what is right. Terry’s huge personal sacrifice has provided the motivation for many others. Read the vignettes of some of them in the third part of this book.


Third, the conviction that we must all work to defend what makes this country great and good and bring it back to its senses.

And finally, the desire to get involved in the political process at any level.

Teach your children, teach others, and participate in the work of running this great country.

Marco Ciavolino Administrative Trustee for the Terry Lakin Action Fund


1. 27 April 2011

“Lakin, come over here, come over here!” said one of the ch’mos.1 “You’ve gotta see this.”

I was staying in the Joint Regional Correctional Facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, a prison in all but name. At that moment I was about to leave my cell, a windowless, 14 x 7 model of Army efficiency: two steel bunks, two steel half lockers, a combined steel sink and commode, and a sheet metal desk with a sheet metal seat that doubled as a step for the upper bunk.

Until I went to prison I had no idea how much I would come to appreciate luxuries like plastic and porcelain.

Looking back, I am sure it had to be the early evening when the ch’mo alert-ed me. I was on my way to outdoor rec at the time, and rec followed our early supper. Thank God for rec! Although less than an hour long, it helped me keep in shape and keep my sanity. I usually did some running and sprints around the fifth-mile track, and power walking when I could do no more.

1 Ch’mo is prison shorthand for a child molester.


I had started running when I was stationed in Honduras in 1994–95. I ran around the airfield; there wasn’t much else healthy to do there. Later, in Germany and Bosnia, I confess to slacking off some. In Germany, in those rare moments when I wasn’t serving the troops, it was often too cold. In Bos-nia, it was too hot, and I am not referring to the weather. There were land mines planted all over the place. One wrong step off the beaten path, and your running career could be over quickly and permanently. Sometimes we would even find land mines in the path. Luckily for us, these mines had lost their reliability over the years, so it was not quite as hot as it once was.

It wasn’t until I was sent to Hawaii that I got serious about running and swimming. I did some mini-triathlons there and ran the famous Honolulu Marathon. In Hawaii I was attached to the 25th Infantry Division (Light). In 2003, the Division deployed overseas, part of it heading for Iraq, the rest, me included, to Afghanistan.

My division was based at Kandahar Airfield. There we renovated most of the “Talibans’ Last Stand,” a hardened concrete airfield hangar with a big hole in the roof from a JDAM guided bomb. My bunk for several months was against the plywood wall on the interior edge of the blast damage. In October of that year, our unit made a hasty move to Shindand Airfield to quell the Herat riots. We then set up Regional Command–West and were responsible for providing security for a large area of the country.

Very generously, the Honolulu Marathon officials sent us all the equipment we needed to keep the race going. Later that year, 200 of us ran the Honolulu Marathon, but thanks to Honolulu’s generosity and the Army’s support, we ran our Honolulu Marathon in Afghanistan. The unit at Salerno hosted it.

If “Salerno” does not sound like a name you would expect to find in Afghani-stan, there is a reason why. It was named for the beachhead in Sicily where the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment dropped in on 14 September 1943.

My physician assistant (PA) and I trained for the marathon while we were at Shindand. He was a little better runner than I and much more of a running enthusiast. We made the arrangements to get our area medically covered and then flew together on a C-130 supply flight to Kandahar. From there, a cou-ple of Chinook helos took a group of us to Salerno.

My PA was a good friend with a great backstory. He and his brother fled Hungary when it was still Communist and made their way to a refugee camp


and eventually to the United States. Here, he became a naturalized citizen and a very successful PA and officer in the U. S. Army.

To get back and forth between bases, the runners were able to hitch rides on a few Chinooks and a C-130. At the start of the race, a few Harriers did a fly-by, and a B-2 dropped some flares to let the Taliban know we were not to be messed with. If I don’t get a chance to say it later, I want to thank now all those people who did so much to support our troops wherever we went.

Now, back to prison. On 27 April 2011, I was being held in the minimum-security quarters at Leavenworth. I had recently been moved there from me-dium security because I had only a few weeks left of my sentence. More on this later.

This particular cellblock had two levels of twenty cells, ten on each side, and a common area in the middle. There were two TVs in that common area. The ch’mo directed me to the one on which President Barack Obama was speak-ing. We watched an extended clip from a press conference he had given that morning. I was at my prison job when the press conference aired, and there had been little warning that it was coming, so I had missed it.

Although some of the words I heard I won’t forget, I can’t claim to remember them all, so I have gone back and watched the video. Let me share portions of it with you.

OBAMA: As many of you have been briefed, we provided additional information today about the site of my birth. Now, this issue has been going on for two, two and a half years now. I think it started during the campaign. And I have to say that over the last two and a half years I have watched with bemusement, I’ve been puzzled at the degree to which this thing just kept on going. We’ve had every offi-cial in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital.

“Every official in Hawaii”? I guess the president did not consult with Tim Adams. During the 2008 election cycle Adams served as senior elections clerk for the City and County of Honolulu. He saw enough shenanigans there that in September 2008 he resigned and headed back to graduate school in his native Kentucky.

In 2011, shortly after my release from Leavenworth, Adams posted his mas-ters thesis from Western Kentucky University. It was titled “Discourse and


Conflict: the President Barack H. Obama Birth Certificate Controversy and the New Media.”

In his thesis Adams tells the story of what happened to him when in 2010 he innocently went public with what he knew about the famed birth certificate. “There is no hospital record of his birth in Honolulu,” he said in a June 2010 radio interview and repeated in his thesis, “and the Hawaii Department of Health told us in the Elections Office that there was no birth certificate.”

“From all I have seen,” Adams continued in the interview, “Obama has lied about being born in a hospital in Hawaii. It simply didn’t happen.”

If you don’t know about Adams, there is a reason why. Within a week of his one radio interview on the subject, tech-savvy Obama fans launched “phish-ing” attacks against Adams by digging their way into his personal data. The functionaries who represented Western Kentucky University were verbally abused, threatened with violence, and charged with institutional racism. Ad-ams’ contacts at WKU were told in no uncertain terms that his Adams was a Nazi. And MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann publicly named Adams the “Third-Worst Person in the World.”

Adams, who is anything but a conservative politically, was stunned. Although his WKU superiors did not boot him, they put him under a gag order until he graduated. If other Hawaiian officials needed a warning, the abuse of Tim Adams served it up on a platter. As of this writing, no official in Hawaii has made a serious effort to look into Obama’s birth certificate, and those who said they did have not been able to keep their stories straight.

“Bemusement” was another word in Obama’s presentation that struck me way wrong at the time. Obama said he had watched “with bemusement.” Did he watch “with bemusement,” I wondered, when I kissed my wife and three children good-bye and headed off for five months at Fort Leavenworth?

OBAMA: Now, normally I would not comment on something like this, but . . . during that entire week the dominant news sto-ry wasn’t about these huge, monumental choices that we’re go-ing to have to make as a nation. It was about my birth certifi-cate. And that was true on most of the news outlets as well.

And so I just want to make a larger point here. We’ve got some enormous challenges out there. We’re going to have to make a series of very difficult decisions about how we invest in our fu-


ture but also get a hold of our deficit and our debt—how do we do that in a balanced way.

And this is going to generate huge and serious debates, im-portant debates. And there are going to be some fierce disagree-ments—and that’s good. That’s how democracy is supposed to work. And I am confident that the American people and Ameri-ca’s political leaders can come together in a bipartisan way and solve these problems. We always have.

But we’re not going to be able to do it if we are distracted. We’re not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each oth-er. We’re not going to be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts. We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and car-nival barkers.

“Carnival barkers”? That was the phrase that stung most. I suppose the presi-dent was referring to Donald Trump, who had publicly challenged the presi-dent’s nativity story, but I thought he might very well have been referring to me as well. If I was not a carnival barker, I must have been part of the “side-show.” I must admit I was not a very big part of it. From the beginning the mainstream media had little interest in what I was doing, and the president probably less.

PRESIDENT: I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest. But I’m speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got big problems to solve. And I’m confident we can solve them, but we’re going to have to fo-cus on them—not on this. Thanks very much, everybody.

“Silliness”? Is that what all my efforts amounted to, court-martial and impris-onment included? You might think that at this point I was totally deflated, but I wasn’t. I was a little disappointed, but more confused than disappoint-ed. I hoped his birth certificate was for real, but I was skeptical. “Trust but verify,” President Reagan had said.

My release date was 13 May 2011. The Jerome Corsi book Where’s the Birth Certificate? was scheduled to come out days later. I had been listening to Trump, and apparently the president had been listening too. My suspicion


was that the pressure was mounting. I figured the president had to say some-thing, but what he said did not convince me. My fellow inmates knew what I was in Leavenworth for, and they said out loud pretty much what I felt.

I should add that Obama has few fans in the U.S. Army, even in its prisons. Say what you will about prisoners, they develop an even healthier respect for freedom than most of the rest of us.

“If this is a sideshow,” said one prisoner, “Obama is the one who caused it.” I was heartened. Most of them got it. Most of them were sympathetic. Most of them respected me for the stand I had taken.

The ch’mos too. Before judging too harshly, please be aware that a certain percentage of all prisoners are falsely accused.

One of them asked how I felt. “Relieved,” I said. “I’m glad it’s finally out.”

“That should help you,” he said. “Don’t you think they’ll drop the charges now?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “You know how the Army works.”

“One question, Terry.”

“Shoot.”

“All you were asking for was a birth certificate, correct? If Obama had noth-ing to hide, how come he didn’t release it a long time ago?”

I guess what they say is right: no one knows a con job better than a convict.

CoverBack CoverBibliographic Data About the ContributorsDedicationPrologue1. 27 April 2011

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OFFICER’S OATH: My Vow to Defend the Constitution ~ i · 2012. 7. 2. · ii ~ OFFICER’S OATH:...

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